actor-manager system,method of theatrical production dominant in England and the U.S. in the 19th century, consisting of a permanent company formed by a leading actor who chose his or her own plays, took a leading role in them, and handled business and financial arrangements.

The advantages of this system became apparent in the 18th century when successful actor-managers such as Colley Cibber and David Garrick achieved performance standards superior to those achieved by theatre owners who hired occasional casts for individual plays. In the 19th century great actor-managers such as William Charles Macready, Sir Henry Irving, Madame Vestris,

and

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, and Laura Keene maintained high standards.

Shakespeare was an ever-popular staple in their repertoires because it afforded the actor-manager an opportunity for his interpretation of a famous role such as Shylock, Iago, or Richard III

The repertoire usually involved a combination of Shakespeare, popular melodramas, and new dramas or comedies. The era of the actor-manager

, however,

was geared to star performances, and often the actor’s most famous performance was in an inferior literary work, such as

Sir Henry

Irving’s role in the horror play The Bells.

The trend toward realism, partly the result of controlled lighting that allowed for the darkening of the auditorium, thus creating an aesthetic distance between actor and audience, led

Several factors contributed to the decline of

personality-dominated plays. The

the actor-manager

was replaced first by the stage manager, who unified the various effects of the performance from the point of view of an onlooker, and later by the more creative director, who imposed his own interpretation on the play

system: more corporate ownership of theatres, a trend toward ensemble-style acting, obsolescence of the stock system of play rotation in favour of long runs, and the cost of investing in new plays, which led to new combinations of artistic personnel for each new venture.